A bum steer
Philip Glazebrook SPY ON THE ROOF OF THE WORLD by Sydney Wignall Canongate, L16.99, pp. 247 If you imagine the Iliad done as a Cony On movie, you get an idea of the uncomfortable fit in this book between heroic content and demotic style. The adventure, which took place in 1955, belongs in its entirety to that era, when the afterglow of war hero and empire-builder still flushed English minds; but the story bumps along on its arse with all the coarse- ness of today. If Wignall ever admits that once he heard the horns of elfland, you can be sure he'll add that they were blowing a raspberry. Exhausted and in great danger returning from Tibet, he is made aware of a 'presence' supporting him from falling and from fear alike, which he ascribes to the power of prayer; once out of danger, his mood more robust, he steals several offerings from a Hindu wayside shrine as souvenirs, 'hoping that I would not offend the gods'.
Wignall's manner is robust and evidently persuasive (this book carries on its cover seven pre-publication endorsements from actors and marquesses and film-directors). Having founded the Mountaineering Club of North Wales, he soon drums up support for a Welsh Himalayan expedition, which sets off from Llandudno pier to drive to India in search of a mountain to climb. Under its naive leader (who at that time had never been in an aeroplane or on a horse and couldn't swim) the party had picked up two almost fatal infections before the Himalayas were reached: Wignall had caught dysentery, and he had agreed to collect information about Chinese troop disposal inside Tibet for Indian military intelligence.
If this were a novel, the reader would admire the writer's art in leading his guile- less hero so quick and so deep into the mire. By page 50 the explorers — Wignall, Harrop and their 18-year-old Nepalese interpreter Hamodar — have been arrested by the Chinese. They were detained in that corner of Tibet from 28 October until 10 December. Remote as it was, Wignall was able to gather from his prison cell for Indi- an intelligence 'everything they needed and considerably more,' a friendly Chinese guard fortunately offering the completion date of the China-Tibet highway without even being asked for it. A day-to-day account of detention conditions and inter- rogations makes up the bulk of the book, all too much of the action, thanks to Wignall's dysentery, taking place in the lavatory.
Dick Barton, as far as we know, never went to the lavatory. It is the mixture of styles, the confusion of eras — Barton with his trousers down — which makes this book so uncertain in tone. An adventure story must be all of a piece if it's going to carry you along with it. The characters here are simple stereotypes: Wignall the leader, Harrop the jaunty stalwart who is forever saving his leader's life, Hamodar the devot- ed native who by the book's end is indoctri- nated with his English companions' sentiments, and emerges from the hills exclaiming, 'My golly! I'll have a bash.' The opposition is Chinese and therefore fiendish. When our three friends fall into Chinese hands there is a build-up of sinis- ter atmospherics towards the first interro- gation. Wignall is bundled in front of his drooling captors, forced to the floor, poked with gun-muzzles. The voice of the inter- preter (whose function is described as translating 'from English into jargon understandable by the others') barks out 'Hello!' At this point Wignall says that he responded, 'And hello to you, my old China.' Sid James as Dick Barton.
Repeatedly, just as I was beginning to enjoy the old-style terms of reference, the black-and-white movie show, the stiffened upper lips, the rats befriended in the cell, the phrases from le Quex — 'Fate has a knack of playing strange tricks' — repeat- edly I was tripped up by bathos. An unwelcome attack of incredulity follows, and pages of hokum are spoilt by not being able to suspend disbelief. At an outdoor interrogation session, when a thaw causes a landslip on nearby slopes, the Chinese Interrogators all dive under the English- man's chair. Either the reader doesn't believe the story, or he ceases to find the interrogators alarming.
It is as if the events happened so long ago, in that other era, and the author has told the stories in exaggerated form so often since, that he has forgotten to apply the credibility test to them. Did he really think he had convinced Chinese intelli- gence that Hillary had deposited a surveil- lance device on Everest? How can he believe 'I had won' because he had signed a confession of espionage with a false name9 And doesn't he realise that if Indian intelligence trusted him with their secrets only because he went to a school whose headmaster had bowled out W. G. Grace, then he is making out Indian intelligence to be as fatuous as the Chinese? And how about this pronouncement, quoted with awed approval, from the shadowy spy- master?:
Politicians come and go, Wignall, they are transient beings. But the Indian Army remains, and we must do what we believe is right for India.
Hardly a point of view to spy for.
Having blundered in out of their depth, and blundered out again through all the obstacles which fiction might have placed in their path, away over the horizon of time, the three heroes recede, chuntering and sniggering, threatening enemies with a good sock on the jaw, hearing on the wireless that Stirling Mom has won the Mille Miglia — and, alas, wiping their bums on the Chinese flag in full view of the reader.
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